harvest

i brace her leaves upward / weeping ritual / what others sense as earthen rot / filth from afterlife / is production / she sniffs land with bees & critters / gathering round our hunger 

like a halo / worship how sacral / she ages out / body araneidum / as oncidium / oceanic blood / bloom cycle / together we un-branch / harvest as much lightning / our wails can muster /

electric nectar sucked / from those devastating years of industrious / complexities i shelter / tucking into a crocus / repair comes little / by little rage /

                     uninterrupted canopy / amber withholds bone / i flower/ 
                     bighara / mayari  / nabu / flicker in approval / lower goddess / 
                     sun bitter spells / repeat thrice / their charmed childhood names / 

                     to onlookers we seem / specters / spectacles / glamorous 
                     deviancy / low creeping crabgrass / but ask any blazing 
                     celestial / who know us / hunting as harriers / above the 
                     wretched bombing

Copyright © 2024 by Angela Peñaredondo. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 7, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets.